Peat – sink or source
It was reported in the news today that the UK’s carbon emissions rose by 1.25% over the last year, while overall greenhouse gas emissions stayed on Kyoto targets. Many people won’t be too concerned by this rise, seeing that we are still well below the 1995 CO2 emissions and have reduced other greenhouse gases. I…
A healthy dose of stress
Stress may not be good for our health, but it seems that it might be at the heart of the recent crop of reports that organic fruits and vegetables might be better for us than those grown by conventional methods. After a paper published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture found…
MUM’s not going to poison you
When I buy mineral water, though I don’t usually read the label, I generally expect it to contain the usual sodium, magnesium, calcium salts. Commercial bottled waters in most countries I have travelled to supply this information as a result of a legal requirement. What did come as a surprise was the approximate mineral composition…
Cataloguing Life
Today sees the launch of the Catalogue of Life, a taxonomic checklist of 1 million of the world’s organisms. The catalogue contains contributions from 47 databases constructed by more than 3000 taxonomists and species specialists from around the world. Jointly produced by Species 2000 and ITIS, this 7th edition encapsulates data from 1 million species…
China’s functional food honey-trap
Two brief reports in the most recent edition of Food Manufacture magazine reflect the fascination that the western industrialised world has in the opportunities and dangers of doing business in China. On the one hand, a delegation of food manufacturers and academics brought back information on some 8000 ingredients used in traditional Chinese medicine from…
World Water Day
March 22nd is World Water Day, which this year is themed: ‘Coping with Water Scarcity’. This year’s theme highlights the increased significance of water scarcity across the globe – From Africa and increased desertification, Australia and the increase in the number of droughts in past years to the UK and the water shortage that hits…
Cow + Grass = House
Cows plus grass equals dung; 7-9 million tonnes of it each year in the USA alone! What if cows plus grass made flooring?, or shelving? or a table? Michigan State University researchers, working with the US Department of Agriculture, reckon that the "digester solids" leftovers from anaerobic digestion of cattle manure can be processed into…
Pet Food Safety
The recall of lines of cat and dog food in the USA, Canada and Mexico is causing great concern amongst pet owners and veterinarians as a they try to establish what the scale of the problem is and what the risk is. The problem came to light following the reports of sickness and deaths of…
Celebrating Linnaeus
2007 marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Linnaeus, father of binomial nomenclature. Nature has marked the occasion by publishing a special issue crammed full of Linnaean-inspired thought. Although trained in medicine and a keen zoologist, Linnaeus is perhaps best known as an excellent botanist – his field trips were said to be so…
Controlling the screwworm
Cochliomyia hominivorax, the New World screwworm is a serious pest that lays its flesh eating larvae into wounds of humans and any other warm blooded animals causing myiasis. The adult female fly lays batches of 200-400 eggs on the edge of fresh wounds and the larvae hatch and burrow into flesh 12-21 hr later. The…